Brian Eno announces new album The Ship

The Ship is his first solo album since 2012 and is due on April 29 via Warp. Based on “experiments with three dimensional recording techniques”, the album is split into two parts and “as much musical novel as traditional album,” Eno explains.

“Humankind seems to teeter between hubris and paranoia: the hubris of our ever-growing power contrasts with the paranoia that we’re permanently and increasingly under threat,” he continues.

“At the zenith we realise we have to come down again…we know that we have more than we deserve or can defend, so we become nervous. Somebody, something is going to take it all from us: that is the dread of the wealthy. Paranoia leads to defensiveness, and we all end up in the trenches facing each other across the mud.”

One track on the album features British comedian Peter Serafinowicz reading a poem created by a Markov chain generator, into which they fed “accounts of the sinking of the Titanic, some First World War soldiers songs, various bits of cyber-bureaucracy and warnings about hacking.”